The Story Behind “Long, Hard Words”

In a residential treatment center for neglected and delinquent adolescent boys in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my students called me the “readin’ teacher.” The boys lived and attended school at the center, and I was the Title 1 reading teacher. Many of the boys with reading disorders had been unable to succeed in school and ended up getting into serious trouble, eventually resulting in placement at the treatment center. They shared that their most pressing goal was to be able to read “long, hard words.” Some boys were adept with familiar single-syllable words, but when they came to a multisyllabic word they could not immediately recognize, I would hear: I don’t know that word. They would stop cold, get frustrated, and give up. Often context did not provide enough flow to identify the words, and so I showed them how to use the Sounding Chart to assist them in breaking words apart and then blending the sounds together. Sometimes a learner would get close in sounding out a word, and then it would click, and the word would come together. So my mission became to get the boys close enough, get them in the neighborhood, get them in the ball park. They truly wanted to succeed, and I would now hear: Don’t tell me the word; let me do it myself.

I compiled a collection of wordlists, moving from easy multisyllabic words to “I mean really hard words.” I also gathered a list of driver’s education vocabulary and a life-skills vocabulary; both of which aided boys who once they turned eighteen were sent out into the real world to somehow forge for themselves. Reading scores began to improve dramatically, but I had to develop lessons that would be motivating and keep the boys returning the next day for their sessions. I gave away